All that weekend, Nate was haunted by his brief session with Lena. For as much as he didn’t want to believe she knew any more than he did about his life—even if, these days, he was admittedly fuzzier about more parts of it than usual—he did suppose there was some guidance from her words. And he did tend to make things harder than they needed to be. Someone else would have joyously accepted the reappearance of a mother figure after living an entire life without one—especially after they were left essentially orphaned. Thirty was far too young to be without at least one parent. Nate had already spent way too many hours thinking about all the things Jim would never be around to experience—in Nate’s life as well as in his own—and it struck him as egregiously unfair.
For better, but really worse, Nate had too much time to mull all this over as he spent Saturday and Sunday finishing the paint job on the Escarpa house, which had begun to speed up after he moved on from the trim to the wood-and-stucco walls. He tirelessly motored over the two days, painting well into the twilight hours until the darkness sent him and Cody—who’d kept him company almost nonstop—back inside.
He didn’t speak to anyone all weekend (he thought of texting Jennifer hello but didn’t know what to say beyond that) except for Max and Carter, who stopped by while he was out front to tell him again how great the house was looking. Nate self-consciously took the compliment but found he was happy for human interaction. To that end, he kept the guys talking and even offered to help them with some landscaping needs in their side yard—no charge. They couldn’t say no.
But Nate’s thoughts kept ricocheting back to Lena and Amy and his strange conundrum. It seemed as if he had two choices: ignore Amy, end whatever it was they’d started, and hope she’d move back to Fresno and out of his life; or nurture the relationship she seemed so eager to have and see where it led. That Nate still believed what he’d said to Jennifer about Amy “not going away” kind of made up his mind for him. At least for the time being.
That Monday morning, Nate and Danny started work on the Russos’ yard. Corey and Brooke—he was in tech sales, she was a TV development executive—hung out for a while answering Nate’s questions and coming up with a few of their own until their offices beckoned. The couple was almost as lively then as they were that first night when they were so happily cocktailed up. Maybe they were amped on early morning caffeine or maybe they were just naturally cheerful, but Nate liked being around them and Danny found them kindred spirits (meaning they laughed at his corny jokes). They all agreed on a dry creek bed—Corey and Brooke had seen Amy’s and were knocked out by it—but would wait on the proposed gazebo to see how the yard came together.
The morning went smoothly enough. Nate and Danny, with the help of Butch and a new assistant, Edgardo (Luis was back in Guatemala visiting family), did a major tree and shrub trim, took out any dead or dying plants, and began enlarging the flower beds. Building the dry creek bed would start later in the week.
Meantime, Danny, after his initial joviality with the Russos, was strangely low-key the rest of the day. At lunch, Nate got him to reveal that he’d had a big fight with Alicia and now she wasn’t speaking to him. It had something to do with him flirting with their waitress while they were out for a family dinner the night before. Danny denied paying any special attention to his server; Alicia accused him of flirting with everyone. “I’m a friendly guy!” he countered, to which Alicia apparently said, “Aha! So you admit to sweet-talking our waitress!” It was downhill from there and Danny slept on the living room couch.
“Danny, c’mon, you know how you can be,” Nate said. It surprised Nate that it had taken Alicia this long to call out her husband on his “friendliness.”
“Okay, but you know I’d never do anything,” Danny assured him between bites of a BBQ chicken sandwich, and Nate believed it.
“So tell her, talk it out, and make some grand gesture to let her know how you feel about her—and only her.”
“Y’mean like you did with Jen?”
Danny might as well have said “What the fuck do you know about communicating?” and he’d be right. Nate realized he needed to lay some cards on the table with Jennifer—and with Amy.
And that’s just what he did, at least with Amy, after they’d wrapped up for the day at the Russos’. He parked in front of her house, spent a few minutes admiring her yard, and rang Amy’s doorbell, but there was no answer. Though it was past five thirty, she apparently wasn’t home from work yet. As he turned from the door to wait in his truck, Amy’s Camry eased into the driveway. She honked brightly at him, parked before she reached the garage, and bounded out of the car.
“Nate! What a lovely surprise!”
“We started on the job around the corner, so …” His voice trailed off as he studied Amy’s hopeful face. He was there to do what he told Danny to do: communicate. Yet he wasn’t sure where or how to begin. Unlike their past conversations, this one felt like it would have—would have to have—a more defined result. Or what was the point?
Before Nate could twist his head into a knot any further, Amy took the lead and invited him in for a drink. He needed one and likely so did she. He followed her into the house but not before they stopped to take in the beauty of her front yard together.
Though he wanted a beer, Nate said yes to a glass of the Malbec Amy offered. They sat in her backyard and drank, which was both soothing for Nate—to bask in his and his team’s hard work—and unsettling, as he spotted things that needed tending. Amy rested her wine glass on the small teak table between them.
“Not that I’m not happy to see you, because I am, but what made you come by today? Really.”
Nate took a long sip of his wine and carefully considered the answer he was about to give. “I think I believe you,” he finally announced. It came out like a weary cop exonerating a would-be criminal.
Amy’s mouth slowly curled into a warm smile. “I’m glad,” she said, then added, “Are you?”
Nate stared out at the colorful row of snapdragons he’d planted, amazed by how fast they’d grown and how rich their colors still looked in the vanishing light. Was he “glad” about Amy and the thoughts that had been coalescing in his head? He wasn’t entirely sure.
“You must have some feelings,” Amy said. She seemed more curious than offended.
“Well, part of me feels guilty,” Nate answered, realizing this as he said it.
Amy’s eyes widened in surprise. “Guilty? About what?” She swallowed the rest of her wine, then cradled the empty glass in her palms.
He tried to figure out exactly what he’d meant. He searched the bottom of his wine glass for a clue. It hit him. “Guilty … like I’m cheating on my mother with another mother.”
Amy poured herself another glass of Malbec. She tipped the neck of the bottle in Nate’s direction. He set his now-empty glass on the table as a “yes,” and watched Amy refill it.
“Then part of me feels stupid,” Nate continued, his thoughts evolving. “Like I’ve spent my whole life loving someone—okay, theoretically loving someone—who never existed.” He took a swig of the wine, then added, because he needed to say it out loud, “Stupid that I believed my father all those years—and maybe stupid that I miss him so much.” His eyes misted up and his chest felt tense. He was pissed at his dad and yet there was a gaping hole in his life without him. One that he wasn’t sure could be filled by another parent—literal or figurative. He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand.
Amy left her chair and hugged Nate, tentatively at first and then, when she saw he wasn’t resisting, more tightly. “Oh, Nate. You have nothing to feel guilty or stupid about. If anyone should feel guilty, it’s me.” She held Nate another few seconds, then, as if she didn’t want to press her luck with him, let go and returned to her seat.
They were both silent until Nate, with a slight challenge in his voice, asked, “How guilty do you feel?”
Amy looked jarred by his tone, if not the question itself. Either way, she seemed fully prepared to answer. “I wouldn’t wish what I’ve felt on anyone,” she said, the words cracking in her throat. “And I couldn’t even begin to apologize to you for what I’ve done.”
Nate was moved and even a bit overwhelmed by her confession. It was more than he expected, even if, in truth, it was Jim he wanted an apology from, not Amy. In some ways, she was as much a victim of circumstance as Nate. He wanted to tell her that, assuage her sadness in some small way, but chose to keep it inside. He realized he wasn’t quite ready to give Amy the full benefit of the doubt—it was something she’d have to earn.
Wine glass in hand, he crossed to the rose bushes he’d planted in a pair of large terracotta pots. He was happy to see how healthy and vibrant they were looking. He was also glad to be diverted, if only momentarily, from the emotional whirl of conversation. Nate leaned into a silky white and coral-red rose, inhaling its perfumy scent.
“You know what this is called?” he asked Amy, staring at the striking flower.
“A rose?” There was a shrug in her voice as if answering a riddle.
“Sure, but what kind of rose?”
Amy joined him at the colorful plants. “I don’t know. ‘A rose is a rose is a rose.’ Isn’t that what they say?” She smiled at Nate, but he looked lost in thought.
“I don’t know, but no—they’re all different, all unique, all have their own traits, their own stories. Like people.” He met Amy’s gaze, and then relaxed into a half-smile. “Don’t mind me, I get geeky around plants—if you haven’t already noticed.”
“Things are what they are.”
Nate put on a mock offended face. “Oh, so you have noticed. Gee, thanks.”
“What? No, that’s what that phrase means: ‘A rose is a rose is a rose.’ That most things are just what they seem—no more, no less.” She watched as Nate took that in. “It’s from a poem from the 1920s, by Gertrude Stein.” She sipped her wine, then gently added, “Your father read it to us in class one day. That’s how I know it.”
Nate turned back to the rose bushes. “Ah,” he said, pinching a yellowing leaf off a thorny stem. Jim was never far away for either of them, was he? “Well, I don’t think I ever heard that poem. But I get Gertrude’s point: Don’t make more of something than it is.”
She offered a wistful smile. “Not always that easy to do, though, is it?”
Nate wasn’t sure if she meant “not easy” for him or her but appreciated the thought. And how come Jim never showed him that poem? Or had Nate just lumped it in with all the other books and stories and poems Jim had tried, with varying degrees of success, to share with his son—and had forgotten all about it? What Nate wouldn’t give for one of those literature lessons now. He took a slug of the Malbec, enjoyed how each hit instantly went to his head.
“Double Delight,” Nate finally said, brightening. “The rose. It’s called Double Delight. Because it’s two colors.”
“And they’re … delightful?”
He aimed a thumb at the rose. “You tell me.” It occurred to Nate that they’d just had a simple, everyday exchange and it felt good. Like he was talking to someone he’d known a long time. The feeling was short-lived.
“Do you know that I’ve celebrated every one of your birthdays?” Amy asked, crossing back to the patio chairs.
“My birthdays?”
She cautiously chose her words. “Every September second, I’ve lit a candle, tried to picture you, and prayed that if we ever met, you’d find even the tiniest place in your heart to forgive me.”
He took that in, surprised by such an act and moved by its tenderness. Yet somehow, it left him with an ache inside. “That’s really nice,” he finally said, “but a card might have been more personal.” He looked away, knowing it was a stupid, kneejerk response; she wasn’t allowed to ever contact him—that was the deal. And yet.
Amy took a long pull from her wine glass. Nate thought maybe he should go; escape was so easy. How often had he chosen that route? He preferred not to think about that. Instead, he sat next to her again, knowing she still had more to say. And maybe so did he.
“I told you,” Amy reminded him, “when Jim left Fresno, no one knew where he went. No one. And by the time social media became a thing, I’d stopped looking. Until the day I read his obituary, I had no idea you were living in L.A.” She put down her wine glass and recited as if reading from the newspaper: “Survived by one son, Nathaniel, a Los Angeles landscape designer.”
“So, if Dad lived another thirty years, does that mean I would have been sixty before you tried to find me?” He didn’t know what was more jarring, that Jim could have been around so much longer or the thought that Nate would be sixty one day—if he was lucky.
Amy shifted around in the chair to face Nate head-on, daring him to look away. “For years, I would fantasize that Jim would call me. Ask me to break our ‘pact.’ Ask me to come and visit our son. Come and live with the two of you.” She stopped short, swallowed hard, and choked back a tear. “Of course, that never happened. And, well … I finally had to let go.” She let a tear escape, then another, but didn’t break from Nate’s somber, pensive gaze.
What she didn’t know—couldn’t know—was that the empty ache he’d been feeling had been replaced by something fuller, more hopeful … even merciful. Nate couldn’t pinpoint his sudden swing of emotion—maybe all the wine had kicked in—but he had an urge to reach out to Amy, take her hand, tell her it was okay, that no matter what, they’d survived the trauma, that maybe she had earned his trust. That they had a world of tomorrows to share.
But he didn’t do or say any of that because he was still not ready to fully open the door to this relationship—whatever it may hold. Better to quit while he was inching ahead.
There was one more question he had for Amy before he took off, and it surprised them both. “What’s a good night for that home-cooked dinner you promised me?” Nate asked as he finished what was left of his wine and realized he’d be driving home with a little buzz. Like everything, he’d have to take it slow.